MoveOn.dud

Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the “General Betray-Us” headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction. This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling is as witless as the “Defeatocrats” and “cut and run” McCarthyism from the right; it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war’s cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow.

On the Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity and the rest of them clung to the “General Betray Us” headline like shipwreck survivors hanging on to a life preserver. Tossing it to them was not an outstandingly brilliant MoveOn move.

The argument that the Bush Administration has betrayed the trust of the American people is a perfectly valid one. But the fact that a particular general’s name lends itself to a particular rhyme was not a good enough reason to make him a primary target. That doing so was a mistake was confirmed when the most memorable moment of the general’s testimony before Congress turned out to be his answer to Senator Warner’s question whether achieving the Administration’s objectives in Iraq would make America safer: “I don’t know, actually.”

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